“They are all moves where the clubs hope they
have strengthened themselves.”

“Of course.”

“And what have the Mets been doing?”

“They signed Cespedes.”

“To which I give a double thumbs up.”

“They resigned Rene Rivera.”

“That, in the finger-raising-rating scale,
will get you a tip of the pinky.”

“Now they’re trying to trade Jay Bruce.”

“On the digit-o-meter, that’s starting to
send the thumbs pointing down toward dear old Mother Earth. That is what you
call addition by subtraction.”

“They laid out a lot of money for Cespedes.”

“True.”

“They gotta keep the payroll down.”

“That is prudent business operation, but that
ain’t the way to build a ball club.”

“What’s wrong with being smart about
business?”

“Absolutely nothing. It’s like the canvas on
which you paint your picture. However, the masterpiece is created by the way in
which you smear the paint on top of it.”

“So what do you want them to do?”

“I want them to continue to improve the ball
club. They need help in the pen. They got questions behind the plate. Let’s
make solving those problems the priority, not the question of saving a few
bucks.”

“They gotta see what they can do with Bruce.
What if they trade him for a guy in the pen, when you’ve already picked up all
you need? What if they have a hard time trading him?”

“Then they might go to spring training with
too many guys in the outfield. The Cubs had that problem last spring, and look
at what a debacle it turned their year into. Improve the club comes first
before prudent business practices.”

Expect to see Holland in a Mets uniform. He's the lightning-in-a-bottle approach that Sandy Alderson likes so much. Beyond that, it's the lesser named pitchers who were successful in setup roles for other clubs.

And oh yeah...Paul Sewald is still out there. Stay tuned for tomorrow's column.